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Armed with a new laptop I decided to try and gather all my saved files in one place - random junk, old photos and projects and programs and what not- gigabytes and gigabytes of it.

It's weird how much there is in life, and how much of it we forget!

As I think about curating this giant heap, I think of something I wrote a few weeks back, apologetics for my nostalgia :

Again, I celebrate myself and my past, sometimes to an unseemly degree. But that's all I have, you know? I think about stories of old folks on their deathbed who, like, wish they had had more sex and what not - or to put less juvenile-y: deeper, better relationships, that sort of thing. And there's not a lot glamorous about my life and my loves or my history in general - it was good, and I did the best I could with what I had then, the same way I'm doing what I'm doing now, though now I have a little more insight to what drives me at fundamental levels. But, glamorous or not, it was mine.

Of course, in this time of quarantine, certain videos or photos take on this stupid sense of foreboding...

But going over the old material... it's a way of reclaiming my past. As it all slips into foggy memory, it's tough to remember that those were real times, as real to me then as my now is to me now.

I just thought of the case of Joël Aubin, a man knocked down with Alzheimer's at the unbelievable age of 38. Even as his mind was dissolving, there was a a certain Pearl Jam song he was fond of citing, and I'm playing it now: I Am Mine...

I am mine, you are yours. Try and enjoy it and cherish that as much as you can. Even the broken pieces have something to show you.